sin city – 5 stars

there’s so much to be said about this film i couldn’t dare try to say it all. the visual style (points), the involvement of the writer of the source material in the filmmaking (more points), the success in transporting a noir graphic novel to noir special-effect film (extra points) — each of these could be their own lengthy essay, and i leave those to people with more time and a more patient audience.

i’d much rather focus on how sin city hit me, sitting there on opening night, trying to digest a movie unlike anything i’d ever seen. i keep coming back to the single poster image above here that i’d been fawning over for weeks prior, and how that sums up the film experience so well — exactly what i hoped, and i still wasn’t prepared for what i saw.

the beauty of this image is the story it tells in one panel, like the best bottom right square off the page of any great comic. you have the grisly, larger-than-life male hero, the archetype this movie feasts on — even if there were actually three, and even if bruce willis’ hartigan only gets second place in the badass race. there’s no question his character, or any other in this film, is going to do some damage, and you’re raptly waiting to hear the trigger pull.

we’re not talking just any fight against city hall kind of damage either. as shown by the angle of attack here, we’re on the ground looking up with the soon-to-be-dispatched, knowing that we’re powerless, and that a brutal, violent end is near. similarly, all through the film, the violence was shocking in its graphic depiction and depraved method. this may have been the most startling thing about sin city to me, something i wasn’t prepared to see so vividly on screen. having not read the books, but being familiar with other equally violent comics (see any issue of ennis’ preacher series where bullets are fired), and even miller’s other stuff (see dark knight returns), i know how fantastically bloody the possibilities are in graphic novel format. so then on screen, after my brain adjusted to seeing such whimsically depicted blood and pain, it became part of the film’s accomplishment: to dare visualizing that same degree of imagination, and do it so accurately to the tone of its comic counterpart. as a result, the shock of seeing it on film became part of the delight, just as it does seeing that level of fantasy played out on a page. from blinding white pools of blood against a dead black floor, to the yellow puddle left by the film’s most disturbing villain, to the smile on elijah wood’s face as he sits stoically tied to a tree (the details of which i won’t spoil for you, if you haven’t seen it) — these are images a filmmaker alone probably wouldn’t have been able to force on us, but a filmmaker recreating a miller comic is thrilled to finally bring to life.

which leaves us with the gorgeous look of sin city, something that could be off-putting to non-comics readers, but i’d bet in more cases is equally mesmerizing even to those who don’t get they stylistic in-jokes of good panel framing put to digital film. just look at that poster’s treatment of harsh, cold rain on an unforgiving city. its generous helping of black painting out more than half the image. i can only speak for myself as a comic fan, but i was pulled helplessly into this world from the first look out over sin city from that balcony, josh hartnett notwithstanding. unlike sky captain (least original comparison ever, but it can’t be helped), which was amazing to behold but intentionally unreal, rodriguez managed to take an obviously unreal world and make it more hyperreal than seemingly fake. sure, there might not be alleys that dank and claustrophobic in any real city you know, but this is its own world, and in that world, you know they’re all that dark and dangerous.

okay, so it has its flaws too. maybe a car getting a little too airborn over a hill, or a silhouette being a little too contrasty for its own good here or there can take you out of that world for a split second. maybe now and then there’s a line that instead of being perfectly over the top for the character speaking it, is just past over the top and unconvincingly delivered (mickey rourke’s marv, it should be noted, NEVER has this problem — brilliant job there). maybe robert should have stuck to just adapting, directing, shooting, editing, doing effects and i don’t know, probably making sandwiches, and hired an outside person to get a better score for this thing (luckily, the music wasn’t so bad i noticed until the picture ended and the credits rolled, at which point i thought, “oh my, what mediocre music”). and then of course, there was brittany murphy, who if only her delivery could match her decolletage, might be worth her screen time.

but these are trifles. we’re talking about a fresh, experimental film that delivers visceral excitement in a whole new way, through a cast that’s to die for and a look that’s inspired and accurate to its creators. did i love this film? you’re fucking right i did.